Header Right

Main navigation

personal archives

Personal Archive files in Outlook, often call PST files are used to email and other items outside of Exchange or Outlook. If the file becomes damaged, the data within it can potentially be inaccessible.

There are a number of reasons why a PST might become damaged the most common being; when a PST files grow to an unstable size (which can be either 2GB for Outlook 2003 related PST files, or 20 GB for Outlook 2007/10 ( often called Unicode PSTs)

When this occurs,

1 – find scanpst.exe, which is hidden away within your PC’s program files (this location changes with each version of Outlook, so it is advised to search the disk for the file.)

2 – run the executable

3 – select the browse button to locate the PST with the issue, and select start. This will now scan the PST, looking for problems to resolve (and so may take a while) and should offer you the option to repair them once it has completed. You should now be able to open the PST and access the data, although this is not a guaranteed method to recover the data and so some data loss may have occurred.

If this did not resolve the issue, you may need a third party repair tool. There are many options available, both paid for and freeware, but the same caveat applies – none of these will be able to guarantee the return of all data, so for that reason ensure you always have good backups of your PSTs, and preferably move away completely from PST files using PST Management software to discover and archive the data contained within them.